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You might also consider some non-standard railroading in order to fit your tight space. Urban electrified lines are not exactly easy to model in N-scale, but there are some ready-made trolley models out there, and these can certainly negotiate a 6" radius curve. Thing is, you'll end up modeling a lot of buildings in order to create a reasonable city, so hopefully you prefer buildings to trees and hills. If you're really brave, you could model a European route, rather than American. This means a lot of research, but ain't that what the old internet is for? European model makers offer a lot of equipment, and almost without exception any European piece of rolling stock is much shorter than its American counterpart. Smaller means that it can handle tighter radii. One other option is to model in Z-scale instead of N. Trains in Z-scale can handle a 7" radius curve, though I wouldn't try for tighter than this. Z-scale equipment is a bit more expensive than N, and there is less variety, but you don't have a layout size which will require a huge fleet. Two or three locomotives might be plenty. An alternative to Z-scale is to model N-scale but on narrow-gauge rails, which would incidentally be Z-scale rails. Actually, there are makers of Nn3 track for this purpose, but I suspect that it is cheaper to just use regular Z-scale track (and bury it beneath enough ballast so that you can't tell). Nn3 is probably more expensive than Z, though. The benefit would be that aside from the track and the tight turns, everything else is N-scale, thus easier to work with than Z. One final option would be to just model a REALLY OLD-TIMER railroad, as it would have looked in the 1850's. Engines would be 4-4-0's and 2-6-0's or smaller, and all the rolling stock would be shorter than 35 feet. Bachmann makes Old-Timer train sets, which though they may not be the best quality as modesl go, they certainly provide a workable variety of cars and engines. Other manufacturers usually have a few old-timer products in their line. Again, this would require some research, but it could become very interesting: you might even model an ongoing Civil War battle!
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